In recent years, it has become general to provide in-vehicle apparatuses having a car navigation system for guiding a route, a DVD playback feature, a CD playback feature in vehicles.
In such an in-vehicle apparatus, an image display section such as a liquid crystal display is provided near the driving seat in the vehicle interior to display, for example, a map around the current running position of the vehicle or various kinds of input setting screens on the image display section. Moreover, a larger image display section provides better visibility. For this reason, there is known a configuration in which mechanical buttons disposed around the image display section are reduced to provide a larger image display section while a touch panel is provided on the surface of the image display section. An operator performs an input operation to the in-vehicle apparatus by performing a touch operation, such as touching, flicking, or dragging on a part of the touch panel.
When an operator looks at an image display section for an operation or performs a detailed touch operation on a touch panel (e.g., operator looks at the section for more than two seconds), the operator no longer pays attention to the forward direction of the vehicle and his or her concentration on driving may decrease. Accordingly, it is not preferred to operate a touch panel while driving, for safety reasons.
Therefore, while the operator is driving, i.e., while the vehicle is running, operations for the in-vehicle apparatus are often restricted at a certain level in consideration of ensuring both safe driving and appropriate operationality of the in-vehicle apparatus.
As a conventional navigation apparatus, there is known an apparatus in which, upon detection of running of the vehicle, a touch area of a button displayed on a touch panel of the navigation apparatus is made larger in size than a touch area to be displayed while the vehicle is not running, in order to enhance the operability during driving (for example,. see PTL 1).
Moreover, there is also known a touch panel apparatus in which a display form of a display portion is changed in response to the running state and movement of the vehicle in order to ease the operation during driving (for example, see PTL 2).